[HR, AKA “PEOPLE AND CULTURE”] The whole company except engineering and finance is based out of Moline. As a result, HR does not have a presence in the Chicago office or see what happens there. Not only was it difficult to reach out to HR when they weren’t around and hadn’t really built relationships with engineers, but it was known that conversations with HR would make their way to other members of leadership, without any anonymity. This led to many team members feeling uncomfortable and unsafe with HR, and a few women declined exit interviews. Engineers had been asking for anonymous feedback channels specifically around diversity/inclusion issues for a long time but those requests were laughed off repeatedly and didn’t exist until it was too late for most. Engineers also tried to create a diversity/inclusion committee in order to make the Chicago office safer and more inclusive, but HR said a committee “wasn’t necessary”, and per usual, did everything they could to control the narrative.
[BENEFITS] The 401k doesn’t start until after 1 year, not even for your own contributions. You don’t get health insurance until a full month after you start, which is a bit silly since you’d think a healthcare company would prioritize their employees’ healthcare. And so much for “free” health insurance - of the three health plans, only the one with the highest deductible is free.
[CULTURE] Attempts to communicate problems to senior leadership were dismissed with responses like "You must have misunderstood," “I don’t think he meant it like that,” or "I haven't noticed that." An “open-door policy” doesn’t mean much when you don’t take your employees seriously.
[CTO] This person lacks empathy and the skills necessary to be a successful CTO and leader. The environment he creates is toxic and psychologically unsafe for people from marginalized identities. The women on the team experienced a lot of anxiety and fear regarding job security and were made to feel inadequate at their jobs. I saw this affecting the morale, mental health, and even physical health of my teammates.
Examples:
1) Questioning women point-blank, “Do you believe you’re a good engineer?” and then invalidating their positive responses.
2) Reminding women that he watches all the pull requests, reads them every night, and therefore knows what everyone on the team does or doesn’t do.
3) Verbally negging/devaluing team members’ hard work in an apparent effort to get them to work longer/harder.
4) Making women feel guilty for pursuing hobbies or being involved in their communities rather than spending their off hours doing more work. Constantly reminding everyone that when he was an engineer, he was very absorbed in his work outside of work hours.
5) Literally referring to himself as a “10x engineer.”
6) Making employees feel uncomfortable by making comments about their financial choices and lifestyles by saying things like, “You can afford that. I pay you enough.”
7) Telling women who voiced feedback that they were complainers. Telling women who asked questions that they were “branding” themselves as incompetent workers. Making passive-aggressive jabs and doling out microaggressions to the point that it impacted women’s self-esteem and made them feel insecure about their technical abilities.
8) Using the fact that at one point the engineering team was 50% women to pad his ego and brag constantly. It started to feel like we were his trophies, and to be honest, it made me feel gross and tokenized.
9) Being informal, casual, and “joking” to the point of being inappropriate, i.e. referring to one of his direct reports as his “other wife” or his “work wife”, saying women can’t code, and telling an employee, “You’re awful at your job.”
10) Constantly demanding feedback and claiming it’s safe to give it (see: “open-door policy”) and then lashing out/exploding whenever he hears something he does not like. Manipulating people into feeling guilty by responding with things like, “I give you all of this, and this is the thanks I get?”, and “People are just ungrateful and always want more.” His volatility was widely known, and much of the managers’ jobs were just to figure out ways to communicate to him and package things in a way that wouldn’t trigger an extreme reaction.
Managers carefully communicated to the CTO that his behavior was damaging the team and its culture. This resulted in some changes like discontinuing his 1:1s with engineers and removing him from some team meetings so that engineers could feel safer in those spaces. But he never apologized or acknowledged the harm he created or that he needed to change his behavior. The women on the team were told that it would be on them to move on, and avoid/ignore him as much as possible. For me, this was the worst part. It really showed that not only would the CTO not be held accountable for his actions, but also that the company truly did not care about its employees.
